How do live American sport events work on PAL TV sets?
PAL and NTSC are analogue encoding methods. Most output has been digitally sourced in at least the last 15 years. These days UK broadcasters would take a (probably v high bit rate ~50Mbps) digital feed. At the play-out centre this would be encoded and compressed (1-4Mbps SD, 10-20Mbps HD) for transmission on the different digital platforms and converted to PAL for analogue transmission (where it still exists). Converting a digital signal is relatively easy. Since most US digital output will be HD, the resolution isn’t really an issue. As others have suggested there are a number of routines to cope with frame-rate differences. At the simplest level, I guess frames can be combined at play-out level. Most broadcast MPEG video frames (P and B) only describe the differences from the last full image (I-frame) anyway. Typically the BBC send out I-frames as 1 in every 15. Five, have been known to go as far as 1 in 45.
